Catch of the Day

I miss the taste of bluegill. Pan fried, plucked by my father from the icy spring-fed waters of quiet little Singer Lake on a frigid January afternoon. His catch of the day would arrive in our utility room in a galvanized bucket without water, still flopping their strong 5-inch spines as their gills slowly gasped for air again and again, until the bucket stopped rocking and all was silent. 

Places, everyone. 

My mother would clear off the kitchen’s well-worn ceramic sink and its drainboard, retrieve the designated fish towels from the lowest cupboard in the kitchen, remove the braided throw rug from its sacred spot in front of the sink and replace it with a carpet of newspaper, covering the five strides the fish surgeon would use to approach the operating table.

My well-rehearsed role was to peer my 6-year-old eyes over the edge of the bucket, now that the flapping and jostling had ceased, to perform a head count. Still glistening from their former watery world and protected by a slick coat of their own extra virgin fish oil, they were shimmeringly beautiful.

“Do you see the blue gill on each one?” my father would ask.

“Yep, I see one! There’s another!” I replied, as I re-focused on the task of inventory. “One, two, three... four, five, SIX!” A very nice catch, indeed. My father was clearly pleased.

Stepping into the kitchen, my father popped the cap on a bottle of beer and took a long draw. Knives and a scaler positioned, he confidently set to work.

Here’s where I stepped away, at least until the heads were off and the guts spilled. With a few deft strokes of a sharp blade and a minute or two of a scratching scaler, the bluegill hardly looked like fish anymore. What I loved watching, though, was my father’s hands. Their unhurried and practiced motion, carefully moving from one fish to the next, trying to keep the spurting juice in the sink and the stubborn scales from flying to my mother’s frilly kitchen curtains.

Where there’s fish, there’s an odor, but in the middle of a Michigan winter, our little house didn’t only smell like fish whenever the outdoorsman returned. There was a whiff of snow and ice and cold air, and a lingering scent of the kerosene from the lantern light of my father’s ice fishing seat box. His worn snowmobile suit, ideal for a winter sit on the ice, slowly thawed in the utility room, releasing the essence of cigarette smoke, chainsaw fuel and hunting dog drool.

Now, my mother’s role shifted from surgical assistant to home chef. Oil bubbled to life in a pan on the stove as she lined up shallow bowls of flour, egg and breadcrumbs on the counter for the six specimens.

While the fish simmered in their new bath, my father batted clean-up, wrapping fish innards and other remains in newspaper for a backwoods treat for raccoons, and disinfecting the surgical areas with a wet dishrag. He whistled as he scrubbed his hands and forearms and finished off his patient beer. 

It was time to sit down and celebrate the afternoon’s success, hearing for the first time how thick (or thin) the ice was on Singer Lake, whether any of my father’s fishing buddies were also in the game, how long it took to pull his fishing box out to a good spot.

He knew exactly what my sister and I were waiting for. With a twinkle in his eye he said, “Someone has shoveled a nice oval out there for skating. The ice is a little bumpy in spots, but it should still be pretty nice tomorrow... if you want to go with me.”

Be still, our hearts. 

Eating fish was a ritual observed nearly every Friday night, year-round, during my Catholic childhood, although it never felt like a fast from meat or a piece of penance.

We recited our communal table grace before each of those meals, but it wasn’t until these most recent 10 years or so, some five decades after my childhood, that I began to appreciate the real “bounty” we mentioned in our prayer, or what a “gift” it truly was.

The tender white flesh, speckled with tiny black threads, lifted from the bone with anticipation—the bluegill never disappointed. The crisp, warm breading melted in our mouths. This wasn’t the type of food you could shovel in; it required careful separation of meat from needle-like bones, each bite savored. Slow food, indeed.

Other Fridays we would have a different fish, depending on the season. Sometimes perch, steelhead salmon, lake trout, walleye, all making the mistake of messing with a baited hook at the other end of my father’s line. In their retirement, he and my mother spent entire afternoons and early evenings in a trolling boat, skimming the waters of nearby rivers, small lakes and even the mighty Lake Michigan. 

Working as the team that they were, they filled our freezer with fillets of everything, and the cupboard held canned jars of smoked everything else.

All good, all the time. 

But it’s those bluegill that stay at the forefront of my memory. I have never eaten one from a restaurant, not wanting to taint the recollection of a taste and ritual, linked to the fisherman who is preserved in my heart.            

Deborah Rieth writes from a Michigan small farm, where her soul is nourished by gardens, kitchens and words. This piece was written in memory of her father, who celebrates his 100th birthday this year by casting his net off the heavenly side of his boat.